Thursday, December 27, 2012

Archer's Tavern has been open for a couple of years now, and I'd heard almost a 50/50 share of great and terrible things about the place. It's close to Ma and Pa FvF's, so we figured when we could give it a try before picking up Lil FvF from a night with the grandparents. We're not college football watchers, but we were still aware of the OSU/Michigan rivalry game - but we figured we'd be going for lunch early enough to miss most of the hooplah and fanboys. The parking lot had enough spots left that I figured we'd made a safe bet - but the second we opened the car doors and heard the yells coming from inside, we knew we were wrong. I'd promised this review to another entity (who later decided they didn't want it), so we pressed on instead of trying to find a quieter eatery. This is my warning to all of your Archer's loyalists (I can tell there are a few) that yes - I realize I chose a bad time to review them - but a restaurant should be on their A-game for new patrons at ALL times.

The roars got louder as we approached and opened the door, and I could feel my blood pressure rising. The hostess was perfectly pleasant, as was our server. As we were lead to our seats, we noted the layout that the bar was mostly separated from most of the restaurant by a wooden and glass partition, which would contain a lot of the whooping going on toward the game. Unfortunately, there some serious assholes there that think it's kosher to bring your wife and small children to the main dining room, pound almost half a dozen Captain and Cokes, and scream at the TV in the main dining area. It became painfully and quickly evident that this family are probably regulars and the staff made zero effort to ask this douche to bring it down a peg or two, regardless of the other families with children and older patrons trying to have a meal near them. They just kept letting this guy breathe up all of the good air and run up his bill. Sorry, natives - but this is the kind of drunken entitlement that Centervillers are known for. This is why I almost never, ever eat in your town.

Anyhow, the food was par. We ordered fried pickles, the Mister had a Brat Burger and I had a cheesesteak. His burger was actually pretty impressive, but cancelled out by how dry and bland my cheesesteak was. Yes, I just said a DRY cheesesteak. I actually had to ask for mayo to get through it. \T

The pickles were pickles - nothing to write home about. I'm sure there's some inside joke or bizarre logic to the pricing, but nothing was a nice round number. This annoyed me for an unknown reason.

We just didn't care for the place, and we won't be back. We've also told anyone thinking about going not to waste their time. It's bar food, done sub-par, quite a bit of it overpriced and with no regard for non-regular customers. Same reason we never set foot back in Bunker's in Vandalia, and they had much better, cheaper food.

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